64 BULLETIN 102, VOL. 1, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



destructive element to the marked abnormal conditions affecting the 

 industry, but readjustments in foreign trade were quickly effected 

 and the unfavorable consequences of external circumstances were not 

 long continued or far-reaching. Toward the end of 1915, owing to 

 the declining output of the Gushing pool, to the acquisition by a few 

 strong companies of a vast accumulation of surplus petroleum in the 

 Mid-Continent field, thus withdrawing it from the open market, 

 and to the general increase in automobile consumption of petroleum 

 products, a tension between supply and demand developed which set 

 prices on a steady climb, renewed confidence in the situation, and 

 started a phenomenal wave of wildcat exploration in search of new 

 supplies. This impetus met with a quick and successful response in 

 the way of output ; so much so indeed that the latter part of 1916 saw 

 a measure of overproduction, with consequent price depression ; less 

 marked, however, than the sustained period of 1914^15. This 

 second slump was a passing incident, for the demand for petroleum 

 was too insistent to be met with continued ease. The advent of 1917, 

 then, saw prices and demand again on the upward grade and at a 

 height overlooking the attainments of the past. 



With the entrance of the United States into the war in April, 1917, 

 it became very evident that the petroleum fields of the country had 

 an important, and at the same time, difficult role to play — important, 

 because an enlarging demand was in prospect to maintain the in- 

 dustrial and military activities of the allied cause; difficult, because 

 production, hampered by a growing complexity of circumstances and 

 already shoved to an extreme of activity by favorable prices, pre- 

 sented no prospect of filling the total demand, with little chance of 

 the margin being covered by a growth of imports from Mexico. 



As a result the petroleum resource to-day faces a demand that it 

 can not meet. This situation is depicted graphically in figure 10. 

 It may there be seen that the relations of 1917 can not be sustained 

 throughout 1918 without the arrival of critical conditions, and a con- 

 tinuation through 1919 is impossible. The United States is now 

 (Aug., 1918) consuming and exporting more petroleum than she is 

 producing from her own wells and receiving from Mexico. The dis- 

 crepancy, which is growing from month to month, is covered by a 

 draft upon the petroleum storage in this country, the amount, on 

 hand January 1, 1918, being about 153,000,000 barrels.^ And while 



1 It may be pointed out that this storage can not safely be reduced below a certain 

 minimum figure, say 50,000,000 barrels, needed to fill the pipe lines and keep the whole 

 industry in course of operation. 



